Time’s Edge

Commander Michael Blayne of the Galactic Armed Forces is highly suspicious of his orders to retrieve a malfunctioning probe from an Old Earth sidetime. After all, the job is a basic training mission, not a usual assignment for an officer of his rank and caliber. However, his Chief-Commander Alrick Zartollis assures him that he is perfect for the mission so he prepares to depart accompanied by a smart-mouthed, know-it-all computer named Max.

The “simple assignment” rapidly becomes complicated when he meets Kate, a young woman who prevents him from retrieving the lost probe. When he and Kate are literally blasted from Old Earth to another place and time, Michael realizes he has been set up by his esteemed Chief-Commander. “Probe retrieval, indeed,” he mutters as he surveys his new surroundings and the odd individuals who live there: Edgar, a mechanical servant, who disdains the implication that he is a robot. “The robot was my ancestor,” he sniffs to Michael, “just as the amoeba was yours.”; Jafrey, an irreverent old man with a long gray ponytail, sharp tongue, and a dangerously powerful talent; Nick, the giant Sarzonian monster who can quote Shakespeare; Ivar, the master of a mysterious place called Belencourt, who got so tired of powerful visitors blowing up his electromagnetic door that he had it replaced with an old-fashioned hinged door that was less susceptible to strong auras.

Michael soon discovers he is on a mission so secret he is not even allowed to know what it’s all about. To make matters worse, Alrick Zartollis, the one man who knows the truth, is nowhere to be found while the events he carefully put in place one hundred years earlier unfold in ways he never intended.

Time’s Edge is the first place winner of the Tassy Walden Award, a literary prize given by the Shoreline Arts Alliance of Connecticut. The story blends adventure, humor, and romance in a fun-to-read mix of sci-fi and fantasy.